1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a text summarizing method and system and particularly to a text summarizing method and system for summarizing a text in an electronic form including text information.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, various types of text information in an electronic form have been used for communication. The preparation of computer networks has been promoted and text information can be obtained easily from a distant place. It is necessary to obtain necessary text information from these pieces of text information or summarize text information. For that purpose, if a system for automatically summarizing a text can be used so as to select text information or summarize text information, it is effective.
As a system for automatically summarizing a text, a summarizing support system described in Journal of Information Processing Society of Japan, Vol. 30, No. 10, a digest extracting system described in the Proceedings of 38th Annual Convention of Information Processing Society of Japan 6D-9, and an automatic text skimming system for Japanese explanatory texts described in the Proceedings of 46th Annual Convention of Information Processing Society of Japan 7B-11 have been reported.
When a human makes a summary of a text, it is considered that the method thereof varies with the constitution and field of the text. For example, the definition of an important portion is obviously different between a newspaper article, a specification of patent, and a technical paper. Even in newspaper articles, the summarizing method is obviously different between an article of judicial decision, an article of traffic accident, and an article of exchange.
The aforementioned systems all handle only texts belonging to a special constitution or field, so that when texts of other types are summarized, the precision comes into question. When a text is to be summarized in the state that there is a possibility that texts of various constitutions or fields are supplied, there is nothing that can be done about it.